Muscle and Joint Injuries

Muscle and Joint Injuries

There is rarely such a thing as a simple joint/ligament sprain or muscle strain. If you have injured one of the major joints in your body (Shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee or ankle) it is very likely that your body will be compensating in some manner. This not only prevents you from achieving optimal recovery, but will create secondary problems.

Truth about the injury and treatment

It is human nature to pursue the magic pill or wand that it going to speed up your bodies healing process. The truth is that once you have damaged tissue, it needs time to heal, be it your bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, nerves or skin. We will always provide the most honest prognosis possible when it comes to recovery time. The treatment and rehabilitation prescribed will be based on an in depth assessment of all the involved structures.

This will include

analysis of the condition or mechanism of injury

testing and correction of muscle imbalances

testing and retraining of stability and motor control

rehabilitation for return to daily activities and sport

injury prevention programs

Example – Knee

People often think of the knee as a simple hinge joint. It moves in two directions, is controlled by the quadriceps at the front and hamstrings at the back. What more is there to it?

The knee is actually a joint complex – comprising:

femoral tibial joint (the hinge joint)

Superior tibio-fibular joint (allows for some rotation of the knee complex)

The patella-femoral joint (The knee cap)

It is paramount that the above joints are working correctly together in-order to have a pain free and functional knee joint. A typical knee assessment will test all these structures, start at the hip and finish at the foot, to ensure that the levers (thigh and shin) are acting correctly on the joint. There are over 30 muscles to consider between the hip and foot, of which over 10 have a direct attachment to the knee. As such at Physiofocus we never use the term “simple knee sprain”.